Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service. It's 23 years since the Romanian leader Nicolai Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed, ending more than two decades of their brutal communist dictatorship. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one of the leaders of the revolution which overthrew him. It's Christmas Day 1989, at an army barracks outside the Romanian capital Bucharest.
Nicolai and Elena Ceaușescu have just been condemned to death by a military tribunal. Once their countries feared leaders, the couple are now reduced to shouting abuse at their accusers. Shame on you, shame on you, Elena Ceaușescu screams as the guards tie her hands behind her back and lead them both outside to be shot. Within minutes, it's all over.
Captain Yonel Boiru was in charge of the firing squad. I hold up my men to set the machine guns on automatic fire to make sure we wouldn't miss. I fired 29 cartridges in three rounds. The first one hit Nicolai in the knees, and the second in his chest.
And the third round hit Elena Ceaușescu. It was a brutal end to one of Eastern Europe's most brutal regimes. Really, at that point, we were convinced that we had no other choice than put the Ceaușescus on trial. I must tell you, when they were executed, it was such a huge, enormous, enormous joy all over Romania.
You cannot imagine. University professor Petrie Roman had been at the forefront of the popular uprising that had driven the Ceaușescus from power just days earlier. For years, political dissent was crushed by Ceaușescu's all-pervasive security apparatus. Most ordinary people had found it hard to find enough food to keep their homes, just to maintain the basic necessities of life.
We had two daughters, and the life was very hard, because the difficulties we faced in order to get the most elementary things of the life, like food and so on. I remember the queues were enormous in order to just have, for instance, a bottle of milk, not to speak a piece of meat or butter. I know a doctor, and he told me that there were children who died in the hospital because of the lack of heating, because of the cold. By December 1989, the Berlin Wall had come down, and change was afoot across Eastern Europe.
Protests erupted in Western Romania and were violently put down. Then came the first signs of serious dissent in Bucharest, ironically, at a rally called by the regime to show popular support for Ceaușescu. I was at university, the rally was broadcasted live by the remaining television, and at some point, a colleague called me and told me, come, come, it's something unbelievable, which is happening just right now. Within that huge crowd, there were large groups of people who started to shout and to do Ceaușescu.
This was really something unbelievable. There started the big protest in Bucharest, in front of his eyes. You have those images, shocking images, where Ceaușescu, for the first time after 25 years of his dictatorship, he's looking with great disbelief to what he's seeing in front of him. I mean, a large group of people shouting and protesting against him.
What was going through your mind? What did you say to your colleagues? I said, look, I wish to go myself there, and it's precisely what I did. Petrie Roman joined one of the small barricades going up around the capital.
We are not very many, to be frank. It was just a line of tables and of bars, iron bars, but nevertheless, we managed to cut the traffic, the most nevralgic point of the traffic in Bucharest. But a lot of people came to see us all that afternoon and during that night. Many, many people from Bucharest came to see because they thought that maybe it's the last time they can see such a thing.
Your wife at that stage was at home with the children, wasn't she? She was at home with the... She must have been very worried for you. Even my apartment was not very far from the barricade.
So I decided to go home because I hadn't mind to bring my daughter with me. So I arrived at home. I said to my wife, look, I wish to take Iwana with me because maybe it's the last time she can see that. My wife really was very angry.
She said, if you want to kill yourself, if you want to die, it's your job. But I don't let you to take our daughter with you. He returned to the barricade alone, where tensions were now growing between the protesters and the security forces. We were 81 when they started to shoot with the machine guns on us, directly on us, and they killed 39.
I started to run like a man with all my forces. I saw people falling down and just a miracle happened. I didn't, I wasn't touched by those bullets and my life was saved. I don't know what to say.
It's probably the God's will. I cannot explain that otherwise. Hundreds of Romanians were killed in almost a week of protests as the rebellion spread. But by December the 22nd, the army had crucially changed sides.
And when huge crowds marched on Ceaușescu's infamous seat of power, the headquarters of the Communist Party, they went unchallenged. The latest situation is, according to our correspondent, is that President Ceaușescu has left Bucuret in a helicopter together with his wife. His destination is still unknown, but there are some rumors that he's flying, I mean, to some base and later on to China or he will go in Iran. But this is still unconfirmed.
He tried once again to speak to the people, but the crowd wanted to strangle him. So he had left the place and the helicopter was waiting for him on the back of the roof of some houses. Petrie Roman was among the protesters who stormed the Communist building. It's a complete chaos.
People found, for instance, different books of Ceaușescu and other items. They started to throw them out the balcony. It was in the meantime joy and a wish to revenge after so, so many years of total oppression. Nicolai and Elena Ceaușescu were detained before they could flee Romania.
They were handed over to the army to be put on trial and then executed. Looking back, says Petrie Roman, the dictator's end was always going to be a bloody one. Obviously, it would have been much better to have a proper trial. Impossible to do in those conditions.
Ceaușescu turned into a madman and did undertake everything in order to crush the protests, to crush the rebellion. And, of course, he killed. How can I think differently about him after what happened at the barricade when they shoot and killed 39 out of the 81 we were there? How can you imagine that I can change my feeling?
It's impossible. The Ceaușescu's were buried in simple graves in a Bucharest cemetery. They're often adorned with flowers and symbols of their regime. Petrie Roman went on to become Romania's first freely elected prime minister.
Mike Lanchin. For details of our complete range of downloads and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com slash podcasts.